Monthly Archives: March 2017

Japanese Visual novels are nearly impenetrable without the ability to read the language. They’re essentially choose your own adventure books with music and heavily recycled 2D graphics, which often makes playing one as a foreigner feel fruitless. It’s a lot of glazing over Japanese text while characters switch between one of a handful of frames overlayed on a static background. You can attempt to read the mood of the scene based off voice acting and what little visual information you can grasp, but likely you’re missing most of the context.

Scum of the Brave isn’t too different from the above scenario. If you aren’t willing to test your observation skills, you’ll likely come out feeling quite lost. Nevertheless, it does have some quirks that make it slightly more palatable to the foreign eye than your usual visual novel.

I wouldn’t say I’m a mobile game aficionado. I dumped six months into Puzzles and Dragons, played two months of Final Fantasy: Grand Masters and experienced the riveting Hill Cliff Horse, which was like being in a Gaia Online chat room… But as a horse. I was a very tiny and pretty horse with wings. Clearly I’m the most qualified to talk about Nintendo’s mobile efforts with Fire Emblem Heroes.

The Japanese indie / doujin fighting game scene isn’t anything new or unheard of. While no Guilty Gear or BlazBlue in popularity, there are titles like Melty Blood that have gained at least some following. Inaho Town: Dynamite Bomb!! isn’t the most obscure doujin fighter either, yet it also lacks much fanfare. I generally go into doujin games expecting little, but found the title to be surprisingly accessible and competent for the genre.